RoadRunner SoftStep microstepping motor drive

According to Tom Hart of Testra Corporation, Tempe, Ariz., the intelligent on board processor developed by Testra treats the input steps as small vector moves and smoothly chains them together with 250 or 256 micro-steps per regular motor step with controlled accelerations. Dual chopper stabilized current comparators along with auto-calibration gets rid of communication discontinuities and maintains a near perfect sine wave drive, further reducing motor noise while increasing accuracy and stability.

The drives are shipped with jumpers installed with a divisor setting of 10 to make them Gecko drive compatible, but the jumpers can be reconfigured by the user as needed. The SoftStep drive always micro-steps finely in either 250 or 256 increments per step for DS (double step) settings, 1 (full step), 2 (half step), 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and 256.

INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY MAGAZINE

The March/April issue of Industrial Supply magazine is off the press. It features an in-depth cover story about Omni Services, plus articles by contributing writers that include Troy Harrison, Frank Hurtte, Jason Bader and other leading experts in the distribution community.